Moving to Alliance & Leicester Base Rate Tracker

superpacman1972

Hi All,

My discounted rate mortgage with A&L is due to end at 31st Aug 05 when it will move to the fully flexible Base Rate Tracker (currently 5.25%).

Situation is that we want to pay some of the balance of the mortgage off, as as this product is fully flexible, this should be possible (A&L have been able to tell us this).

We have an A&L Premier Plus current a/c which is where we plan to send the funds from. We have been told that the only way to make a payment that clears on the same day from this account is via CHAPS for which they want £30.

I was told that BACS will take 4 days to clear even though the institutions are the same company. Firstly, does anyone have any first hand experience of overpaying on this product from an A&L current account, and can they confirm that this is true?

Secondly, does anyone know of any other method of making this overpayment, preferably without a charge, that will ensure that it clears on the 1st September. The problem is that if we make the payment via BACS and the payment clears before the 1st Sept, we will get hit for early repayment fees as effectively we will still be on the discounted rate product which has repayment penalties. If we make a BACS payment and it clears after the 1st then extra interest will accrue. Ideally, we would want to avoid both of these scenarios.

Tried sounding this out with A&L mortgages customer services, but to be honest they are not much help on the phone and have been ingoring our letters & emails, so was wondering if you guys could help.

Thanks in advance.